Since Sep. 11, 2001, the need to warn people of threatened property damage and personal injury from a variety of natural and man-made potential disasters has been seen as a high priority need. Typical threatened disasters include natural disasters from weather, such as tornados, hurricanes, mud slides, floods and wind shear, as well as man made disasters, such as those resulting from terrorist attacks, fire, radiation leakage, toxic chemical leakage or bomb threats. Ordinarily, the earlier people and communities are alerted to such threats so that they can make preparations for protecting themselves from them, the less the property damage or personal injury resulting from these threatened disasters.
It is estimated by the partnership for Public Warning that nearly a thousand people involved in the September 11 attack could have escaped the second tower in time to save their lives, had they been able to receive accurate information about what was going on. When the first plane hit, it blew out the electricity, phone lines, and cellular towers. This meant the occupants had no sources of information, relying instead on the inaccurate instructions of the building superintendent, who told everyone to remain at their desks.
Further, the Emergency Alert System (EAS) was not activated that day (for no known reason). But even if it did activate, it would have done nothing to help people most in peril, since they had no access to radio and TV, the only mediums the EAS is authorized to use.
What was needed was a ubiquitous mobile system that could be used in the absence of power and phone lines, to reach people in high risk areas, with government sanctioned information about the emergency, customized per location, and specific, ongoing instructions for post event safety.
There are already in place and operational a variety of prior art systems for warning or alerting people to disaster threats. These most prominently include the public media, such as radio and television news and weather broadcasts and the weather radio system operated by the National Weather Service. These systems, however, are subject to deficiencies because they require radio transmissions broadcast from transmitters located in the region of the disaster, and require that individuals have their radio or television equipment turned on, operating and being observed by the individuals. Persons who are not operating such equipment do not receive an alert, unless they are fortunate enough to have someone nearby who has received the alert and who is aware of their presence and goes to the effort to give them a personal warning.
Additionally, there are siren warning systems to alert members of the public who are in danger of a threatened disaster. These systems are also subject to deficiencies because some areas are not equipped with such siren warning systems and the sirens can be difficult or impossible to hear when there is ambient noise, such as from construction or traffic or a heavy storm or when the sirens are simply too far off to be heard.
There are also a variety of additional warning systems, mostly radio operated, which require specialized equipment. Very few people purchase such equipment and therefore these systems are not effective in providing sufficient warning to large numbers of people.
The infrastructure of the United States and many other countries currently includes a national telephone system which provides a communication system which is widely distributed and provides the most personal route to connection to the greatest number of people.
However, the present warning systems suffer a number of deficiencies. First, they do not have the capability of automatically sending a message to a particular group of message recipients. In emergency situations, it is important to be able to warn or to alert those who are in immediate danger and/or those recipients who are police or firefighters and who would respond to such emergencies. Further, it is important for those in authority and who are authorized to respond quickly to such emergencies, be alerted first. Others, for example those who are in harms way, must also be alerted though at a latter time. Thus, it would be important to have an effective warning system with the ability to prioritize the messages that are broadcast; for example, it would be desirable to send a first set of messages to certain users, e.g., officers in a fire department or the police, before sending a set of messages to those in the area, which is threatened by the emergency.
Still further, it is appreciated that each group of users may require a different message. In such a case, the broadcast alerting system would need to send different, customized messages to each of these groups of people, e.g., a first message to the police and another, different message to those residing in the region where the emergency has occurred.